Orleans carpenter finds his bridge to the past

Saturday

Dec 1, 2018 at 4:13 PM

ORLEANS -- He's just your typical Orleans carpenter working on a typical project: Building a drawbridge over a castle moat -- how else can you keep the riffraff off your lawn?

It's Ian Ellison who, earlier this autumn and without power tools, nails and other unnecessary accoutrements of 21st century construction, helped to restore the entrance of the 800-year-old Chateau d’Harcourt, a French castle once owned by Richard II of Normandy.

That’s a long way from repairing a deck on Bridge Road.

“Since 2005 I’ve been a member of the U.K. Carpenter’s fellowship,” Ellison explained. “And I saw a notice that someone in France was working on repairing very old structures and it was open to all European carpenters, so I phoned him and said I was coming from North America and he said 'come.'”

We should note that Ellison is a specialist (Ellison Timber Frames) working traditionally on old Cape homes.

“It’s working with heavy timber, designing it, cutting it, and joining it to fit perfectly so when it’s finished it’s a piece of furniture,” he reflected. “Whether it’s a house or a barn, everyone can see every joint that was cut. It’s doing a frame so it can be secured with pegs, no nails, steel or plastics. It’s natural using trees and when it’s finished, a home, restaurant or church, it’s cozy and all wood. It just feels good.”

Ellison was the only North American working on the project in his first venture, but that wasn’t an issue.

“Everyone knew how to work with wood with hand tools so language was not a problem,” Ellison recalled. “The final product is all finished with hand tools, planes and axes.”

Joints and pegs are used instead of nails to fit the large and small timbers together. Just making a board is a project as they are hewn out of tree trunks with hand saws and axes – not power sawed from a lumber mill.

So what propelled Ellison to build as if he was living in 1350 instead of 2018?

“”I was going to school at McGill (in Montreal) to design aircraft,” the unlikely explanation began. “”I got summer job on the Cape working with a guy on rough sawn wood and became interested. I bought land in Brewster and bought a book and built a home and joined the Timber Framer’s Guild of North America.”

He’s been at it since 1987. He’s now a member of Carpenters Without Borders, and has toiled in Europe before on another castle in France, and a huge Tithe barn – that’s a barn for storing crops built for a church with parishioner’s tithing’s. Last year he worked on a chateau in Romania.

The Chateau d'Harcourt dates to at least the 11th century (the foundation dates to 1020) with the castle towers built around the 1180s before Richard II went off on Crusade. The family history goes back to Bernard the Dane, circa 945. In 1418 the castle was captured by the English King Henry V (Kenneth Branagh in the movie) and regained by Charles VII in 1448.

The stone walls, first erected by Robert of Harcourt around 1090, still stand but a wooden drawbridge doesn’t last that long, what with boiling oil poured on attackers and such.

“We were working on the drawbridge in the moat. The old bridge was gone and it was all staged,” Ellison recalled. “There were trees in the courtyard and our job was to covert them to square timber with axes and two man saws. I had to go around and figure out the sizes for each one then make a rectangle on each end so whomever was working on the log knew the size of the timber to make. Then we chalked a line, removed the bark and snapped the line connecting the ends and axe to that line and hew to that line.”

The carpenters used European oak, which is slow to decay. It took them three days to hew all the timbers, using ropes, horses, manpower and rollers to get them into position atop the staging so they formed the floor of the drawbridge. Each timber weighed over 500 pounds so it took teamwork.

“We had 40 men and women all working together to one goal,” Ellison said. “Everyone appreciates craftsmanship and quality. The joints were spot on. No shortcuts were taken. It’s like pieces of a puzzle. You slide the first one in, roll the second one on. Underneath there were braces and nothing was a 90 degree angle. We used a plumb, bob and string, and matched each timber to the exact stone.”

Some teenage apprentice carpenters were there to learn. They all enjoyed a five course lunch under a tent in the courtyard and each day thousands of people came to watch the work..

“At the end of the day there’d be a huge meal, four to seven courses,” Ellison said. “Then someone would give a talk. So you are learning and having fun. I’ll have a technique with my ax. A guy from the Czech Republic will have his. Everyone brings their own hand tools."

Ellison had worked at Harcourt before, replacing part of the roof in 2011.

“We were taking apart a structure built hundreds of years before, you could see the tool marks in the original roof,” he marveled. “It’s all done with the same methods; it was built so there is no noise on the job other than the thud of an ax. There’s no screaming chainsaws and no need for hearing protection.”

No indeed, and when he wanted to idle his saw and rest he could do so in the same courtyard Errand of Harcourt reflected in before he left to join William the Conquer in the conquest of England in 1066.